Don’t blame the talented Burgess,he was badly managed in rugby union
LEGEND DAVIES BLASTS ANDREW & RFU FOR SCAPEGOATING BIG SAM
CROSS-CODE legend Jonathan Davies has blasted rugby union’s treatment of Sam Burgess.
On the day Burgess was selected by England for the rugby league World Cup, Slammin’ Sam’s inclusion in England’s 2015 union World Cup squad was branded an “almighty blunder” by former RFU bigwig Rob Andrew.
Welshman Davies, one of very few players to make it big in both codes, is annoyed by renewed criticism of Burgess in Andrew’s book, The Game of My Life: Battling for England in the Professional Era.
Davies said: “Sam could have been a tremendous asset if he’d been used properly. English rugby didn’t use him properly.
“They didn’t play to his strengths. They didn’t use him coming down the short side, they didn’t use him coming down the channels, they didn’t use him as a dummy runner.
“He was thrown in to play a traditional rugby union inside-centre role. He was managed badly.”
Andrew describes Burgess as a “rogue ingredient in the mix, both before the tournament and during it”, and says his inclusion in a side which failed even to reach the knockout rounds had a “negative effect”.
He writes: “To this day, I simply do not understand the thinking behind the fasttracking of a player from international rugby league to international rugby union when so many of the things that had made him wildly successful in the 13-man game were of questionable relevance in the 15-man version.
“It was an almighty risk to select him in a World Cup squad on such extremely limited and highly questionable evidence and it proved to be an almighty blunder.”
Contrast union’s Burgess rush job with the methodical way Davies was nurtured by league on his arrival at Widnes from Llanelli in 1988.
“Dougie Laughton was a good man-manager who didn’t rush me in,” recalled Davies. “He’d pick me for home games and reserve team matches and just let me get to grips with the game a little bit before I was thrown in.
“If you’re going to get someone like Sam from league surely you should know what you’re going to do with him. If you don’t, there’s a lot of people who need to look at themselves.”
Jonathan Joseph (elbow) has been passed fit to play in Bath’s Champions Cup opener against Treviso on Saturday, but Jack Clifford (shoulder) is out of Harlequins’ short-term plans.